Lifeboat Foundation

Recently, we’ve published an article explaining why life extension is not a selfish endeavor. As a matter of fact, life extension is a rather altruistic endeavor, though this depends on your interpretation of the definition. Let’s dig deeper.

What is altruism?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, altruism is disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. Thus, one is altruistic when his or her actions are done for the benefit of others, without placing any importance on his or her own benefit.

With frequent floods, sinking markets and engulfed homes, by 2050 parts of Jakarta will be underwater.

Shares in German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer tumbled more than 10 percent as markets opened Monday, as investors reacted to a shock US ruling against freshly-acquired Monsanto.

Stock in the Leverkusen-based group fell 10.4 percent to 83.61 euros ($95.19) around 9:25 am (0725 GMT), after a California jury on Friday awarded a dying groundskeeper damages of almost $290 million, saying Monsanto should have warned buyers that its flagship Roundup weedkiller could cause cancer.

While observers have predicted thousands of other claims could follow, Bayer said the jury’s findings went against scientific evidence and that other courts might “arrive at different conclusions”.

Over hundreds of millions of years of evolution, nature has produced a myriad of biological materials that serve either as skeletons or as defensive or offensive weapons. Although these natural structural materials are derived from relatively sterile natural components, such as fragile minerals and ductile biopolymers, they often exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties due to their highly ordered hierarchical structures and sophisticated interfacial design. Therefore, they are always a research subject for scientists aiming to create advanced artificial structural materials.

Through microstructural observation, researchers have determined that many biological materials, including fish scales, crab claws and bone, all have a characteristic “twisted plywood” structure that consists of a highly ordered arrangement of micro/nanoscale fiber lamellas. They are structurally sophisticated natural fiber-reinforced composites and often exhibit excellent damage tolerance that is desirable for engineering structural materials, but difficult to obtain. Therefore, researchers are seeking to mimic this kind of natural hierarchical structure and interfacial design by using artificial synthetic and abundant one-dimensional micro/nanoscale fibers as building blocks. In this way, they hope to produce high-performance artificial structural materials superior to existing materials.

Wealth-generating, flat-pack solar houses and a profit-sharing scheme that incentivises retrofitting are bringing sustainable living to people who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

“One of the biggest problems that we see right now is (the creation of) a big gap between the lower and the middle classes. Everyone is talking about this growing inequality gap,” said Bart Glowacki, co-founder of SOLACE, a start-up based in Warsaw, Poland, set up with the aim of making sustainable housing widely affordable.

Tighter mortgage controls, job insecurity and high student debts in Europe has meant that it is increasingly difficult for young people to buy their own homes.

Continue reading “Flat-pack homes and profit-sharing retrofits are making sustainable housing affordable” »

Your unique

To learn more about the conference and see more talks like this please visit us at: https://www.leafscience.org/ending-age-related-diseases-2018/

A researcher from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography and five other scientists have discovered an active volcanic heat source beneath the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica.

The discovery and other findings, which are critical to understanding the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, of which the Pine Island Glacier is a part, are published in the paper, “Evidence of an active volcanic heat source beneath the Pine Island Glacier,” in the latest edition of Nature Communications.

Assistant Professor Brice Loose of Newport, a chemical oceanographer at GSO and the lead author, said the paper is based on research conducted during a major expedition in 2014 to Antarctica led by scientists from the United Kingdom. They worked aboard an icebreaker, the RRS James Clark Ross, from January to March, Antarctica’s summer.

Continue reading “Researchers discover volcanic heat source under major Antarctic glacier” »

Using satellite images of Lombok from the days following the Aug. 5 quake, scientists from NASA and the California Institute of Technology’s joint rapid imaging project made a ground deformation map and measured changes in the island’s surface.

In the northwest of the island near the epicenter, the rupturing faultline lifted the earth by a quarter of a meter. In other places it dropped by 5–15 centimeters (2−6 inches).

NASA said satellite observations can help authorities respond to earthquakes and other natural or manmade disasters.

Continue reading “Indonesian Island Lifted 10 Inches” »